The present invention relates in general to the field of computers and similar technologies, and in particular to software utilized in this field.
Most conventional computers utilize some form of graphical user interface (GUI) functionality for displaying applications executing on the computer. The most commonly utilized GUI function is provided by Windows® operating system (OS) distributed by Microsoft Corp.
With conventional Windows® operation, it is common for a user to work with (or alternate between) multiple desktop applications simultaneously. Each opened desktop application is represented by its individual window, which is typically a complete window (GUI) “maximized” to fit the entire viewable area of the display screen. Typically, having multiple desktop applications simultaneously executing (i.e., with opened windows) may result in a large number of window frames cluttering the desktop. Because of the limited real estate available for displaying the open windows, only a single widow is typically displayed at a time. Thus, each new application window is typically opened on top of the previous application windows, with the newest opened window completely (or partially) hiding the window(s) below it. When there are multiple application windows opened or only a small portion of second windows (i.e., those in back or beside the primary window) is typically displayed if the first window does not occupy the entire viewable area. In order to switch among these opened applications, the user then has to peel away layers of windows to find the specific application window, whose content the user desires to view and/or interface with. This process may involve one or more of (a) closing windows, (b) reducing window(s) to an application bar, (c) minimizing to a smaller window, or (d) other known methods.
When a user desires to view content of multiple windows simultaneously, each window is reduced (minimized) so that multiple windows are displayed besides each other. However, with such orientation of multiple windows, the amount of content/information shown within the respective windows is reduced to fit the size of the minimized window, which still includes the window borders, top menu items (affordances), scroll bars, etc. The user is thus only able to view a limited amount of the content and may occasionally not be able to view all of the desired content within the minimized window.
It is also difficult to view desired content within the minimized window when the content is not contiguous within the window. The user then has to scroll up/down and/or across to view other information within the same window. This is an undesirable effect of using a windows-based application to view/interact with content within the larger physical window, when only a small portion/fraction of the window provides the useful content.